Jain Spirit 1999 07 No 01

Author(s): Jain Spirit UK
Publisher: UK Young Jains

Page 38

www
Kamal Shah
Pictures
This page: Black Lotus Opposite: Moon Shadow Overleaf: Various
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Jain Spirit July September 1999
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KAMAL SHAH
- AN ARTIST FOR YOUNG PEOPLE
In April 1999, Atul Shah interviewed Kamal Shah at the "Lotus Sutra" exhibition at the Meghraj Art Gallery. Kamal is a Jain by birth, and believes that his art is nondiscriminatory. He is keen to practice values which are important to him rather than to preach them.
How did you become interested in Art?
We lived in an extended family so I had lived with my aunts, two of my dads sisters, that were doing teacher training at that point and within their courses they had to do a whole lot of handicrafts and art. So they were doing the work at home, some tie dying and batiking and making baskets and I found that I could do that too. I started by just picking up the material that was there and carried on painting all the time. My parents were also very much interested in arts and music and they had contacts with some Indian artists who came and visited Africa and they used to mix colours for them and play around with them. In particular I recall this old man who from my child's eyes was really behaving like an overgrown child, throwing his paints around. I thought this is one of the few people I've seen who is an adult who is not so domineering and demanding and manages to play and paint he became a role model for me. Art seemed to come naturally to me. gokchun
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How did your family take to your interest in Art? Did they not force you into more mainstream professions, like medicine or business? om don
In general, they were very liberal and supportive. I did really want to study fine arts but they did not really know what I would do after my degree or if I got my degree so I had to make a compromise and go and study the History of Fine Art and English Literature, which was still pretty
liberal of them, and I just insisted on painting. This is the whole thing, there is a certain point in your life when you get older where you realise that there is one life to lead and you have to do what you really want to do.
How has living in Kenya influenced your art?
Well Kenya is not really any third world country. It's got a whole mixture of people from abroad because of the UN, as well as the pre colonial history that we've had and there have also been Europeans that live there, who have been in Africa for 3 or 4 generations and the Africans as well. My parents sent me to the more integrated schools, from kindergarten onwards. I didn't go to a Jain community school and I think that was an experiment. As a result, I have friends from all ages, races and cultures. And Kenya is very well part of the first world. I mean it is one of the few countries I find, that has more of an idea of what is happening in the world internationally rather than in an insular way. Most of the western countries and a lot of the bigger more important countries in Europe don't really know what is happening any where else in the world.
You know I am very Kenyan, I might have tendencies that are very Indian but I am very very much African and love Africans. They are so misunderstood especially by the Indians. I find that the Indians in India really love African things but the Indians that are brought up in Africa have totally not understood what is happening in their surroundings. They are there to make a living and figure out ways of business and commerce and don't really notice what is going on around them and appreciate things. We now tend to hate the west because we sort of feel that it is the direction the world is taking but the Africans have resisted